“Some people did.” They both sank down on the ground beside Paul. He was breathing shallowly, still unconscious.
“I wish the paramedics would get here,” said the woman who’d been taking his pulse.
“I shouldn’t have brought him,” Cheryl lamented. “He hasn’t been out of the house in weeks.”
“You probably shouldn’t have. It may have been too much for him. But the paramedics will help.” The sirens were close now, and she saw the ambulance, lights flashing, pull up on a side street right next to them. The paramedics knelt down to do their work, questioning Cheryl, and the crowd moved back to give them room.
Only then did Samantha look back toward the float.
At the top of it, Corbin was staring in their direction. He looked furious.
* * *
From the top of the float, Corbin stared at the cluster of people in the crowd. He couldn’t believe his own eyes.
There was his mother, being melodramatic as usual. Apparently, his father was on the ground. Being worked on by paramedics.
That was shocking enough. But what was more shocking was that Samantha stood talking to Cheryl as if they were old friends.
Could she just be being nice? But why had she abandoned the float to go over there? As he watched, she put an arm around Cheryl and the two talked as if they were old friends.
Anger filled him and all his muscles tightened. The parade was starting up again but he couldn’t participate; he eased off the top of the float, Mikey in his arms, Boomer beside them.
“Where are you going, Dr. Beck?” one of the boys asked. “You’re supposed to stay on the top of the float.”
“Here, want to take my place?” He thrust Mikey toward the boy.
The teenager shook his head. “No, not me. I’m bad with kids.”
“Take Boomer, then.” He handed over Boomer’s leash. Probably not a good idea to leave Mikey with someone else, anyway, so Corbin jumped off the float with Mikey on his hip.
Mrs. Markowski rushed up to him. “What are you doing? You and Mikey are the focal point of the entire float.”
“There’s someone I have to talk to.” He plowed through the crowd toward his mother, his father and the woman he’d thought he knew.
Maybe it was because his father sat up, but no one noticed his approach. Mikey was sleepy and leaning his head against Corbin’s shoulder.
His father was struggling to say something. He reached out toward Samantha. “Thank you...” he said weakly.
“That’s part of why he wanted to come,” his mother said. None of them had spotted Corbin yet. “He wanted to thank you himself for helping us get Corbin to care for Mikey. It seems like it’s working really well, but we never could have done it without you.”
Corbin’s whole chest went tight. What was his mother talking about?
“I was glad to help you,” Samantha said to his father, who’d sunk back down on the ground. “It’s worth it for Mikey.”
Corbin had hoped his parents had it wrong, that Samantha wasn’t involved, but her words made it clear that she was.
Someone tapped his shoulder and he turned, still reeling, unable to believe what he’d heard.
It was Mrs. Markowski. “I guess you know her secret now,” she said.
Wait. Mrs. Markowski knew that his parents had somehow set him up? Who had told her?
Did everyone know but him?
Betrayal, aching and hard as a stone, grew in his chest. The people who should be close to him had been talking together behind his back, lying to him. Anger surged as he pushed his way closer to the group of medical professionals surrounding his father.
* * *
Relieved that Corbin’s father seemed to be doing better, Samantha leaned back so the paramedics could get to him. She stood. And found herself facing a furious Corbin.
“So you helped my parents scheme against me?” He didn’t bother to wait for an answer, but went on. His face was red, his hands clenching and unclenching, even the one that was holding Mikey. “Did it occur to you that I should know the truth about my own family? How long was this going on? Were you fooling me, lying to me, from the start?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a paramedic, who was pushing a stretcher through the crowd.
Samantha closed her eyes briefly. She had hoped to be able to tell him in her own way, hoped that Cheryl would tell him the truth. She’d known he would be upset. But upset didn’t even begin to describe the emotion she saw flashing over Corbin’s face.
“You are a liar,” he said, enunciating each word, his voice like thunder. “Same as she is.” He gestured at his mother, contempt in every line of his face.
Mikey started to cry. “Corbin not yell,” he wailed.
Samantha reached for him. So did Cheryl, and Mikey’s eyes widened when he saw his mother. His face broke into a smile.
Cheryl cupped Mikey’s cheek and then put a hand on Corbin’s arm, stepping in front of Samantha. “This was my idea and my fault, honey,” Cheryl said to Corbin.
“Don’t call me honey.” Corbin glared at her. “And don’t ever send one of your alcoholic friends to try to pull one over on me again.”
“But I needed to have you take care of him so I could—”
“I really don’t want to hear it.” Corbin’s hands were planted on his hips. “I don’t want to hear it from either of you. I’m keeping custody of Mikey, obviously, but I would be fine if I never saw either of you two again.”
Samantha’s heart turned to stone inside her, because he wasn’t referring to his parents. He was referring to his mother and Samantha.
He never wanted to see her again.
She had screwed this up royally. Of course she had. She was the kind of person who screwed things up. She had had a little interlude of joy and family life in this town, but now, it was over.
“Ma’am, you’re his wife, correct?” the paramedic said to Cheryl.
Cheryl nodded, bit her lip as she looked at Corbin, and then turned back to focus her attention on her ailing husband.
“You can ride along in the ambulance if you’d like,” he said. “We’re getting ready to take him now.”
Cheryl squeezed Samantha’s hand, mouthed the word sorry to Corbin, and followed the stretcher to the ambulance.
Mikey thrashed and cried in Corbin’s arms, and Samantha reached for him again, instinctively wanting to provide comfort. But Corbin turned away so she couldn’t reach him.
“’Mantha!” Mikey tried to reach for her.
She couldn’t stop her hand from stretching toward him again. Just like she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding and her throat from aching.
“Leave him alone,” Corbin said, his voice icy. “I won’t have his life corrupted by an alcoholic the way mine was.”
Corrupted? Was that true, that she was corrupting Mikey’s life?
She’d wanted to help him, but hearing the sweet little boy cry now, she just felt like she’d ruined everything.
Some people in the crowd averted their eyes and turned away, leaving them to their argument. Others stayed, whether to help or collect gossip, Samantha didn’t know. What did it matter?
“I’ll leave now,” she said, feeling numb.
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Where had Mrs. Markowski come from? “You have a float to take care of. And Corbin, you and Mikey are supposed to be at the top of it. There’s still half of the parade route to go!”
“I can’t,” they both said simultaneously. It was just a little irony that they both reacted the same way. They did have a lot in common.
Just not enough.
Samantha stood on tiptoe to see the parade float, feeling guilty that she was letting Rescue Haven down. But it looked like, between Gabby and the boys, they had just reorganized how the dogs and boys were arranged on the float
. There wasn’t an obvious gap where Corbin and Mikey should have been.
They would do fine without her. As would Corbin and Mikey.
Mrs. Markowski continued to scold them. Corbin ignored her and Samantha, both; instead, he stared in the direction the ambulance had gone with something in his eyes that looked a lot like hate.
She turned and made her way through the crowd toward Corbin’s house. She would gather her stuff and leave. Escape, just as she had done once before, pregnant and scared, after high school. She’d go back to the city, she guessed. Nowhere else to go.
Her chest hurt so bad that she wrapped her arms around herself. She would’ve liked to just double over, but she couldn’t. Had to keep moving. Had to leave so she didn’t hurt Corbin anymore.
Why hadn’t she told him the truth? Why had she let it go on this long?
But she knew why; she was bad at relationships and she always messed everything up.
There was a glimmer inside of her, something she hadn’t felt before on that long-ago day when she had left Bethlehem Springs. It came from the signs in the church: you are forgiven. It came from Sheniqua’s words and the articles she’d sent, about how miscarriages usually happened because of an abnormality in the fetus.
It came from the bible reading she’d been doing at night when she managed to stay awake.
The glimmer wasn’t much, but it did make her want to pray, so she walked along down the residential street toward Corbin’s house, mouthing the only prayer she could think of. Help me, Father.
Chapter Fifteen
As the parade ended and the crowd dissipated, Corbin got himself together enough to help Mikey calm down. He’d learned that distraction worked wonders, so he took Mikey over by the Rescue Haven float and let him visit with the dogs.
Seeing the float made his chest seize up. Samantha had worked so hard on it. She and Corbin had worked together. And it had looked like it was going to be a success.
But why had she worked on it? That was what he didn’t understand. Why had she come to stay with him, deceived him about her relationship with his mother, made him think she cared? What was in it for her?
He thought back to the first time he’d seen Samantha back in town. She’d shown up at the café where he’d been struggling with Mikey on that very first day, rescuing him from his own ignorance, making everything better. She’d seemed like a gift from God.
She wasn’t a gift from God, though. Quite the opposite. For some inexplicable reason, she’d arrived on purpose to deceive him.
Corbin was no expert on people. He understood animals and numbers and charts so much better, and he’d never felt his deficit as much as he did now.
But watching Mikey’s tears dry as he cuddled with Boomer and laughed and shouted at the other dogs and boys, Corbin grew determined.
He wasn’t going to let Samantha into Mikey’s life anymore, nor Cheryl, either. Look how Cheryl had given up her son so coldly. And look how easy it had been for Samantha to lie to Corbin, to pretend she was just showing up in Mikey’s life by happenstance.
Mikey was an innocent and didn’t deserve to face that kind of duplicity. No one had been there to protect Corbin as a kid, but Mikey’s situation was different. He had a big brother who had the means and the desire to take care of him, raise him, love him.
Corbin would do that to the best of his ability. He didn’t know exactly how he’d manage, without Samantha, but he would figure it out. He took a couple of deep breaths. He needed to settle himself and think.
Reese approached, frowning. “I got a call from Samantha.”
Emotions exploded inside Corbin, wrecking his attempt to calm down. Jealousy that she’d called Reese and not him. Worry that something was wrong, that she was in some kind of trouble. And swirling all around those feelings, anger at what she had done. “I’m not on speaking terms with Samantha right now,” he told Reese.
“So I hear.” Reese frowned. “I’m questioning your intelligence.”
Corbin’s lips tightened. “You don’t know what she did.”
“True, I don’t. But I know her, and I know she’s a good person.”
Corbin let out a disgusted snort.
“She knew you wouldn’t answer a call from her, and that’s why she got in touch with me with some bad news to pass along.” He paused. “It’s your father. He had some kind of attack on the way to the hospital. There’s a chance that he might not survive it.”
Corbin blew out a breath. His stomach twisted and roiled. “That’s nothing to do with me.”
Reese stared at him. “It’s everything to do with you, man. It’s your father. You need to go to the hospital right away.”
Corbin crossed his arms, looked away, checked that Mikey was still safely playing with Boomer and a couple of the Rescue Haven boys. “He wasn’t a father to me.”
Reese studied him for a minute, thoughtfully, and then spoke. “Look, I don’t know what that would be like. All I know is, once your parents are gone, there’s no more chance to make it up to them, or forgive them, or even ask them why they did what they did. Death is the end, my friend, and you might want to rethink letting your anger be the last feeling you have toward your dad.”
Coming from someone else, those words would’ve infuriated Corbin. But Reese was his best friend. Not only that, but Reese had lost both of his parents at a young age, so he had some authority. He knew what he was talking about.
Corbin stared at the ground and wondered if he wanted to say goodbye to the man who had disappointed him so often, who had knocked him around, who had made his mother into the flighty and incompetent woman she was. “I just don’t know,” he said.
“There’s something else.” Reese was watching him, eyes steady and compassionate. “Your mom is losing it. Apparently, she was hysterical when she called Samantha.”
Again, Corbin was irrationally bothered by the fact that his mother had called Samantha and not him, even though he probably wouldn’t have spoken to her if she’d managed to get his number and make contact. “My mom’s always losing it about one thing or other.”
Reese frowned. “All I know is, this time, she may be facing the death of her husband. She needs her son.”
Corbin’s stomach twisted. So apparently, he still couldn’t hear that his mother was struggling without having some desire, however unrealistic, that he could help her. Ridiculous.
Mikey came rushing over then and wrapped his arms around Reese’s legs.
“Whoa, little man, wrong guy,” Reese said with a chuckle.
Mikey looked up, realized his mistake, and spun to cling on to Corbin.
There was Corbin’s excuse not to get involved with his mother. “I can’t take Mikey into the hospital. He’s too little.”
“I’ll go there with you and watch over Mikey in the waiting room. I’ll bring Izzy along to keep him company. Pretty sure they have a play area for kids there.”
“You don’t have to do that, man,” Corbin protested.
“It’s not a problem. Come on.” And Reese took Mikey’s hand and led the way toward the parking area, leaving Corbin nothing to do but follow along.
* * *
Samantha didn’t want to answer the pounding on the door. She’d planned to come here and grab her things and go, but she just didn’t have the energy. She wanted to stay in her little suite, curled up in a ball, under the covers. She didn’t want to face anyone ever again.
Every time she thought of Corbin’s anger, she physically flinched. He would never lift a hand to her, but his words had hurt like blows. Because they were true.
She was a liar. It was no wonder he never wanted to see her again.
The thought of that void in her life—never seeing Mikey, never seeing Corbin—made her whole chest ache.
But the pounding continued. She pushed herself up out of the bed and made he
r way down the stairs. She would get rid of whoever this persistent person was—they were probably here to see Corbin anyway—and then she could go back to nursing her misery.
She opened the door, her mouth open to explain that Corbin wasn’t in, and then snapped it shut again.
There stood Sheniqua, Gabby and Hannah, and they pushed and hugged their way past her before she could send them away.
“Girl, you look terrible!” Sheniqua studied her face and then took her hand and led her toward the living room. “Make her some hot tea,” she called over her shoulder. “See if you can find some carbs, too.”
“What are you guys doing here?” Samantha asked, confused, as she obediently followed her friend. They must not know what had happened, how she’d been exposed as the fraud she was.
“We’re saving you from yourself.” Hannah perched on the end of the couch and patted the cushion beside her, and Sheniqua led her to sit down there and then took the armchair across from the couch. “I’ve known you practically from the day you were born, remember?” Hannah continued. “I knew you would be sitting in here beating up on yourself. And you shouldn’t be. None of this is your fault.”
Her cousin was so sweet. Samantha tried to force a smile in her direction and failed miserably. “You don’t know what I did.”
“Honey, the whole town knows what you did,” Sheniqua said. “Corbin’s got a pretty loud voice when he’s mad.”
Samantha ought to be embarrassed, but what did it matter? She was leaving Bethlehem Springs as soon as she could muster the energy to pack her things.
“He has a lot of nerve,” Hannah said. “Blaming you for something his mother did. All you were doing was trying to help, right?”
Samantha blew out a sigh. She could tell from the way her friends were settling in that she wasn’t going to get out of this conversation without telling them at least some of what had gone on.
“Water’s heating,” Gabby said, and plunked four mugs onto the coffee table, placing a teabag into each one. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a ziplock bag full of homemade sugar cookies. “Look, you guys, I scored!”
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